> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.composo.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Data retention

> Control what Composo stores, for your whole account or for individual requests.

Composo stores the content you send so that evaluations are reviewable: you can open a
trace, see what was scored, and track quality over time in Insights. Where that is not
acceptable — a contract that forbids a third party holding the data, a regulated
workload, a single strict end-client — you can turn it off.

Retention is controlled in two places, and the more restrictive of the two always wins.

## Account-level

Zero data retention can be enabled for your whole account. Contact your Composo
representative to turn it on. Once enabled, every request from every API key on the
account is treated as zero retention, and no per-request setting can loosen it.

## Per-request

<Info>
  Requires **composo 0.4.0 or later** (`pip install --upgrade composo`). On earlier
  versions the parameter is not accepted by the client. The REST endpoints accept it
  regardless of SDK version.
</Info>

Set `data_retention` on an individual evaluation to restrict that request only:

<CodeGroup>
  ```python Python theme={null}
  result = composo_client.evaluate(
      messages=messages,
      criteria="Reward responses that are concise",
      data_retention="none",
  )

  # The score comes back as normal — only the storage is skipped.
  print(result.score, result.explanation)
  ```

  ```bash cURL theme={null}
  curl -X POST https://platform.composo.ai/api/v1/evals/reward \
    -H "API-Key: $COMPOSO_API_KEY" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{
      "messages": [...],
      "evaluation_criteria": "Reward responses that are concise",
      "data_retention": "none"
    }'
  ```
</CodeGroup>

`data_retention` is available on `evaluate()` and `evaluate_trace()`, and on the
`/reward` and `/trace` endpoints.

If you omit it, nothing changes: older SDKs and calls that never set it behave exactly
as before.

### Values

| Value                    | What Composo stores                                                                                     |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `"standard"` *(default)* | The request content, the trace, and the evaluation record. Everything appears in Insights.              |
| `"none"`                 | Only the usage record, with the request payload redacted. No trace, no evaluation record, no embedding. |

<Warning>
  **Requests sent with `"none"` do not appear in Insights.** There is no stored evaluation
  for the dashboards to aggregate, so those requests contribute nothing to score trends,
  failure rates or criteria breakdowns. You still receive the score in the API response —
  if you need to track quality for these requests, record the returned score in your own
  system.
</Warning>

### Defaults and precedence

* Omitting `data_retention` means `"standard"`. An absent value never stops data being
  retained.
* The account setting and the request value are resolved **most-restrictive-wins**. A
  request can ask for `"none"` on a standard account, but a request asking for
  `"standard"` on a zero-retention account is still treated as `"none"`.

This means a per-request value can only ever tighten retention. If you set it wrongly,
you over-protect — you never accidentally store something you meant to withhold.

## Serving multiple end-clients

The common case for the per-request value is reselling Composo to your own customers,
where some of them permit storage and some do not. Set `data_retention="none"` on the
calls belonging to the strict clients and leave the rest at the default.

<Note>
  There is no per-client configuration and no dashboard view of which requests were
  retained. The value is chosen by the calling code on every request, so a call site that
  omits it stores content. If you serve clients on different terms, route all Composo
  calls through a single wrapper that sets the value from your own client record, rather
  than setting it at each call site.
</Note>

## What is not yet supported

* **Deleting content already stored.** Retention applies from the moment a request is
  made; it does not remove history. If you need existing content for a particular
  end-client removed, contact support — it is a manual operation.
* **Time-limited retention.** Only "store it" and "store nothing" exist today. A
  fixed-window tier (for example, 30 days) is not yet available.
* **Monitoring without content.** There is currently no mode that withholds your content
  while still showing scores in Insights. Zero-retention requests are absent from the
  dashboards rather than redacted within them.